


Facing Tomorrow

by ESawyer



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, This is just generally depressing, but so is the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22083328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ESawyer/pseuds/ESawyer
Summary: Whizzer's shirts are starting to lose his smell.
Relationships: Dr. Charlotte/Cordelia (Falsettos), Trina/Mendel Weisenbachfeld, Whizzer Brown/Marvin
Comments: 11
Kudos: 61





	Facing Tomorrow

Grief was an interesting thing. 

It had the ability to consume him, but also leave him empty for days at a time. Sometimes, he went to work like nothing had ever happened, other times he could do nothing but lie in bed, hugging one of Whizzer’s shirts to his chest.

They were starting to lose his smell. He was going to lose him all over again.

It was amazing, how the others had rallied around him. There were days when Trina would come and sit with him, just because he needed someone too. They didn’t really speak. She would read a book whilst he stared blankly ahead of him. Unless Jason was there. When Jason was there, he would force himself to be a dad - a _real_ dad. He’d talk to him about school, help him with his homework - though he never really needed much help - and lose to him in chess in a way that might have been embarassing if it weren't the fact that he was so damn _proud_ of how smart his kid was. 

He even liked Mendel being around, but that was only because the man was a disaster and it was a nice distraction from how much of a disaster he himself was. Sometimes Mendel would cry, and then apologise for crying, which would make him cry more. And this worried Marvin - after all, he had trusted Mendel with his mental health. 

For a while, he couldn’t see Charlotte, because why couldn’t she have done _more?_ Why couldn’t she have stopped Whizzer from dying? It was her _job_ to stop people from dying! One night, in a fit of rage, he threw a picture of him, Charlotte and Cordelia at the wall. The frame cracked and glass showered onto the carpet. It didn’t make him feel any better, but it didn’t make him feel any worse. In a twisted sort of way, that was probably a good thing. 

Cordelia had been the first to visit him. He had seen the silhouette of her ridiculously large hair in the frosted glass of his back door, accompanied by the tiniest of knocks. He considered ignoring her until there was another, this one stronger. He let her in, eventually. The food she brought him was not the pinnacle of a culinary mastery, but it was also never a disaster. At the very least, it meant that he actually ate three meals a day. 

Daily visits from Cordelia turned into daily visits with Cordelia _and_ Charlotte. The first few times, he could barely even look at her, never mind speak to her. There was a horrible part of his brain - a part that he had probably spent too much of his life listening too - telling him that he ought to yell at her, that he should be telling her that she was an absolutely terrible doctor who should find another job, one that preferably doesn’t put people’s lives in danger. The other part of his brain - the nicer part that he liked to think was the reason that Trina and Whizzer fell in love with him - was being perfectly reasonable as it reminded him that doctors can only do so much, and that Charlotte obviously would have stopped Whizzer from dying if she could help. 

Marvin decided to tell her both things; he told her that he didn’t really believe what the awful part was saying, but definitely believed what the good part was saying. She brushed it off with a wave of her hand because _do you really think you’re the first person to say any of that to me?_

His reconcilliation with Charlotte began his return to normal life, if such a thing existed anymore. The return was a slow and often tentative one. He felt like he was fumbling around in the dark, blindly bumping off walls and tripping over his own feet. If it weren’t for the fact that he always had someone to serve as a light in the otherwise impenetrable darkness, he wasn't sure he'd be able to carry on. 

“How’re you feeling, Marv?” Trina asked him one day, examining the food Cordelia had made with some apprehension. 

Marvin pushed his food around his plate. This was perhaps the oddest thing about grief: Trina, his _ex-wife,_ constantly fighting to drag him back from the edge. He looked up at her, the stress of the past few months was showing on her face in the deep bags under her eyes and the more pronounced lines on her face. He didn’t even want to think about how he must have looked - Whizzer would probably have a field day with tearing apart his appearance. _God,_ what he wouldn’t do to just hear him insult him one last time. 

“I’m OK,” 

And maybe he actually _was_ OK, for a while, anyway. Really, really OK; smiling, laughing, _socialising._ It wasn’t as though he had _forgotten_ Whizzer, he had just learned to carry on without him. 

Or, he thought he had. 

One day, after agreeing to spend the day with Trina, Mendel and Jason, he was rifling through his closet trying to find a shirt. Hanging at the very back of the closet was a light green shirt, one that was never buttoned all the way up and clung to its owner in a way that made Marvin go a little dizzy. He was sure that he used to wear it on purpose. 

Slowly, Marvin took it down from it’s hanger and pressed it to his face. His knees buckled and he fell backwards against the bed - _their bed._ White hot tears slipped down his face, splattering onto the now crumpled shirt in his hand.

“Marvin? What is it?” 

There were hands cradling his face and someone crouched down in front of him. His eyes flickered up to meet Trina’s. 

“I've lost him,” 

Trina frowned a tiny frown that he might not have noticed if he didn’t know her so intimately. 

“His shirts have lost their smell,”

**Author's Note:**

> Completely off topic, but I love the lesbians
> 
> [Follow me on Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/e-sawyer)


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